The Lightning Speed of Multitasking

This is not an uncommon sight nowadays – as mom cooks for dinner, she browses new recipes using her WAP-enabled cellphone. While she does her thing in the kitchen, her kids are preoccupied with something else, one is setting up the TiVo to record that playoff game he’s going to miss; the other is getting jiggy with her mp3 player. As these occur, dad just got home, he answers his ringing cellphone, holes himself in the office to check his emails, then updates his schedule in his PDA. Although they are all physically together in their suburban home, psychologically, each exist in their own little and private universe.

Another common occurrence in today’s world, you just had a big fight with your significant other and since you are in need of a friend who will listen to you whine, you decided to meet up with a college buddy. While you are blabbing your thoughts and worries away, she’ll have one earpiece (of her iPod) in and one out, now that’s one heck of a listening ear.

These scenarios are everyday occurrences, heck these happen a lot to me. But the questions that arise are – Are these gadgets that are aimed at making our tasks more convenient making our lives more maze-like? Are we getting more and more disconnected with our social circles because of thingamajigs that are produced to make communication easier? Don’t get me wrong, I belong to the Generation M, I own most of these gadgets, I use the internet a lot. I have nothing against these. I even got connected again with my long lost childhood friend through Friendster.

More of the article after the jump.

This is not an uncommon sight nowadays – as mom cooks for dinner, she browses new recipes using her WAP-enabled cellphone. While she does her thing in the kitchen, her kids are preoccupied with something else, one is setting up the TiVo to record that playoff game he’s going to miss; the other is getting jiggy with her mp3 player. As these occur, dad just got home, he answers his ringing cellphone, holes himself in the office to check his emails, then updates his schedule in his PDA. Although they are all physically together in their suburban home, psychologically, each exist in their own little and private universe.

Another common occurrence in today’s world, you just had a big fight with your significant other and since you are in need of a friend who will listen to you whine, you decided to meet up with a college buddy. While you are blabbing your thoughts and worries away, she’ll have one earpiece (of her iPod) in and one out, now that’s one heck of a listening ear.

These scenarios are everyday occurrences, heck these happen a lot to me. But the questions that arise are – Are these gadgets that are aimed at making our tasks more convenient making our lives more maze-like? Are we getting more and more disconnected with our social circles because of thingamajigs that are produced to make communication easier? Don’t get me wrong, I belong to the Generation M, I own most of these gadgets, I use the internet a lot. I have nothing against these. I even got connected again with my long lost childhood friend through Friendster.

And because of these technological innovations, most of us nowadays are becoming multitaskers par extraordinaires. Multitasking is nothing new to us, as human beings we always have the capacity to tend to several things at once, people do it everyday ever since the stone age.

But what is amazing nowadays is how fast and easy multitasking has become thanks to our cellphones, laptops, PDAs and the like. Conducting IM conversations, watching Lost, and updating your blog all at the same time is not that hard and time-consuming to accomplish today.   

But I can’t seem to quench my curiosity, so since I have nothing much to do (I was an unemployed bum at that time) and so that I could have real experiences to answer these questions, I decided to conduct a little experiment. As impractical as these may sound, for a week, I did not use my cellphone and mp3 player. I also did not check my mail and log in at Friendster. And as if that is not enough punishment, I fought the urge not to play The Sims 2 and GTA. So for a week I lived with no gadgets whatsoever, I turned off my cellphone (I even asked my brother to hide it from me), and I lend my mp3 player to a friend. I told myself that I lived a happy existence before they got into my life, I most certainly can do it again now. And besides it won’t kill me if I don’t use them for a week, so if it doesn’t kill ya, it can only make you stronger right?!?

How did it go? Well, not as easy as I projected. The first day was a breeze, spent the day lounging around, hanging out and sleeping. I tried the same formula on the second day but there are these lingering thoughts playing around in my mind – Did I receive any text messages? Was somebody trying to call me? I tried to shrug them off, and sleep in silence… Silence was so irritating… I need to listen to some music so I could sleep, I turned on the radio but they all seem to be playing crappy songs. So I tried watching some tv, everything seems boring (it was the middle of the day, you can’t expect anything good). I perceived that the same existence will follow as the week progress.

But, surprisingly, it wasn’t all that bad. I got to hang out and unwind with friends, I got to catch up with my folks, I wrote more stuff, I got to clean my room (which took me two days, ha ha!), I bathe, walked, fed the dogs, and cleaned the hamster cage (that’s where that awful smell is coming from). I was turning out to be one productive person (which was a welcome surprise to the parental units and even to myself).  And as the week ended, I wired myself up again. SMSs began to pour in, I got reunited with my mp3 player, I checked my emails, I logged in to Friendster, etcetera, etcetera.

What I realized in that week long existence is that those devices have become extensions of myself, they are indispensable social accessories and not just luxuries. They allow me to do things that I can’t normally do in the real world, for example, in the real world when things get too hot, I can’t just bail out, whereas if I’m just in a chat room, I could just log off or appear invisible. These thingamajigs do connect a lot of people to their social worlds and enable us to explore tons of possibilities. But I also realized that there is life beyond the screen, that there are just some things that these gadgets can’t do for me. In the end, I began to distinguish what these contraptions could do for me to make my existence more convenient, and what it can’t do.

What are your thoughts about the lightning speed of multitasking nowadays? Do technological gadgets make our lives easier or more complicated? Is this good for our social lives or not? Let us know through your comments.